5/18/12

Family Weekend- May 11-13

Quinn and I had the wonderful opportunity to fly out to Fort Benning, Georgia to visit Joey for his family weekend, which is like a mini graduation from Basic Training, since the next 6 weeks involve a lot of training on tanks.  Specifically the M1 tank.  I'll start with our travels from the beginning. 
    Tuesday afternoon, May 8th, my babysitter called me at 3:45 to say that Quinn had a fever. This is what I was NOT wanting to hear.  The next day, I was hoping the fever would be down and Quinn would be feeling better, but no.  I took him to the dr. and she could not find one thing wrong except his white blood cell count was elevated, which meant that he was sick.  I had to take Quinn back the next day, Thursday, to have another blood test done to see if it shows anything.  Thursday morning, the blood test came out the same, showing he was sick, but not knowing what was causing it.  The dr. listened to him breath and recommended an x-ray to check for pneumonia.  At this point, I was not happy to hear "pneumonia" as an option of Quinn's sickness because I was planning on flying out Thursday night at 10:30.  The dr. called me around 2:30 pm to say that no pneumonia was found, just a virus that must pass.  Yay!  I was so excited.  She said I could travel with Quinn.  All plans were back on. 
     We arrived at the airport about 3 hours early, which was much needed, seeing how I didn't know where the economy parking was and where to go for my airline.  Many of the employees helped me out and I was able to check my baggage and get through security nice and easy.  After that, Quinn was supposed to fall asleep, but no, he stayed up all the way until we loaded onto the plane and flew off.  We arrived in Atlanta, Georgia at 5:30 AM(EST) and I walked and walked and walked and walked down the hallway that had signs pointing to baggage claim.  I was getting very frustrated at this time and asked an employee where to go.  Turns out that I was very close to where I needed to go, I just didn't know it.  We got our luggage, rental car, and drove 1 1/2 hours to Columbus, GA, which is the surrounding city of Fort Benning.  Our hotel was super nice and let Quinn and I check in early, along with upgrading us to a suite for free(so nice) and we were able to get some much needed sleep after being up all night from the 4 hour plane ride and 1 1/2 hour drive. 
     I knew that the family weekend would start at 3:00 pm, so I got all ready and headed out at 1:00 pm to give me PLENTY of time to find where Joey was, especially since I was only about 10-15 miles from where the base was.  I ended up going to 3-4 different entrances and having multiple guards tell me to go to the wrong place(which they didn't know anything about family weekend when I mentioned it), which they didn't do on purpose, but it made me very frustrated and stressed.  After driving for 2 1/2 hours I finally ended up at the correct gate/entrance.  The first thing the guard asked me at this gate was, "Are you here for family weekend?"  Finally someone who knows what I'm talking about!  He directed me where to go and I made it to my destination-late.  Joey had a little ceremony where they did a cadence, he said.  I was dissapointed to have missed it, but relieved to have finally found where I needed to go. 
      From there on, Joey and I were able to go hang out in Columbus and our hotel.  Joey was exhausted and took a nap everytime Quinn took a nap, for the same amount of time too.  Quinn warmed up to Joey and was feeling a lot better by Saturday morning-he wanted to be with Joey almost all the time.  Joey loved seeing Quinn walk and act so much like a big kid.  The biggest difference he said was that Quinn no longer looks like a baby, he looks like a toddler now.  The time we spent together was well worth.  We talked about everthing, it seemed like, and enjoyed every minute we had together.  We were able to try out different restaurants and enjoy the southern charm and very polite people. 
 I think he looks so handsome in uniform.



Waiting at a restaurant for our food and Quinn wanted to go, go, go!

No comments:

Post a Comment